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Shhh! Downtown Core and Corridors Specific Plan Advisory Committee (DPAC) Wednesday

June 4, 2014 //
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Fullerton Project Logo2

A happy logo. Don’t you feel included?

It isn’t listed on the City of Fullerton’s home page, but the Downtown Core and Corridors Specific Plan Advisory Committee (DPAC) is scheduled to meet from 4:30 until 8:30 today somewhere in the new Community Center. (Readers can find the announcement on the single page calendar on the site). The committee with the long name and lopsided membership has met sporadically for many months to review the city’s DCCS plan to tear down small, old buildings located on Fullerton’s main streets and replace them with cheap, dull, mixed use retail and high density housing. The DPAC is, of course, only a formality required to rearrange deck chairs while the ship of the city boldy collides with a future of overcrowded streets lined with big box apartment complexes. Although some notable Fullerton residents on the DPAC have courageously raised objections to the efficacy of the plan’s stated goals:

“- Better landscaping, lighting and sidewalks.

– Improved public spaces.

– Improved connections to our neighborhoods.

– Enhanced city gateways.

– Thriving stores, restaurants and businesses.”

the plan rolls merrily on by distracting the more pliant committee members and the public with promises of landscaped street medians and pretty “gateways” while working to facilitate sanctioned higher density development. They needn’t bother. The DCCSP hasn’t been finalized or presented, let alone approved, by the Planning Commission or the City Council, while the irresponsible developments it will foster are approved month by month anyway.

The DCCSP was routinely referenced by city planning empolyees to justify developments to the Planning Commission and City Council until even they couldn’t, with a straight face, pretend that something as claustrophobic and monolithic (later changed to duolithic) as the recently approved Harborwalk was somehow consistent with establishing “improved connections to our neighborhoods” or “improved public spaces.”

But show up anyway if you can, and let the consultants hired to corral public opinion and shape it into a forgone conclusion know that you aren’t buying the song and dance they’re being paid mightily to perform.

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Categories Architecture, Downtown Fullerton, Environment, Fullerton City Council, Fullerton Planning, Historic Preservation

The Downtown Core and Corridors Specific Plan and Higher Density Development

March 26, 2014 //
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DCCSP-Map

The plan covers 1,310 acres, over 9% of all of the land in Fullerton.

Tonight’s meeting of Fullerton’s Planning Commission includes an update on the Downtown Core and Corridors Specific Plan, aka DCCSP, a plan being developed by an outside consultant hired by the City of Fullerton.

“DOWNTOWN CORE AND CORRIDORS SPECIFIC PLAN (DCCSP) UPDATE AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT REPORT (EIR) SCOPING.

The consultant team will provide a project update and solicit comments and suggestions regarding scope and content of the EIR to be prepared for the proposed project. The DCCSP area encompasses 1,310 acres and spans the commercial core and corridors across the City of Fullerton.”

1,310 acres accounts for over 9% of all of the land in Fullerton. This specific plan represents a major change to the way large amounts of property in the city will be allowed to develop in the coming decades.

According to Fullerton Planning Forum, the city’s public portal to planning projects, the DCCSP “will guide the transformation of the area into thriving and sustainable districts and neighborhoods that meet the diverse needs of residents, businesses, employees and visitors.”

The specific plan promises:

“Better landscaping, lighting and sidewalks.
– Improved public spaces.
– Improved connections to our neighborhoods.
– Enhanced city gateways.
Thriving stores, restaurants and businesses.”

(The description on the Fullerton Planning Forum site sets the number of acres covered by the study at approximately 1100; somehow it has grown by over 200 acres…).

Who would argue with better lighting, thriving stores, and improved public spaces? At the first public meeting about the study, many residents expressed a desire for improved parks in their neighborhoods, but some rightly questioned where the money would come from to pay for them. The DCCSP doesn’t provide funding for anything.

Setting aside for a moment that the “improvements” may not be what you or I have in mind, what we really need to focus on are the “Improved connections to our neighborhoods,” because what the DCCSP is really about is facilitating high density development on Commonwealth Ave. and other major streets in the city.

You won’t find any link to even a Draft of the plan itself on the Planning Commission Agenda, but here is a link to a general description of the project:

http://www.ci.fullerton.ca.us/depts/dev_serv/development_activity/dccsp.asp

Some time ago, before the study commenced, then-Community Development Director Al Zelinka told me that the impetus for the project came from inquiries by land owners who wanted to develop properties on Commonwealth Ave., but were restricted to building one storey projects. The intent, in part, at least, is to adopt changes to the current zoning code to allow for two or three storey (or more?) high density residential or mixed use developments on these properties that directly border streets with residential single family homes.

The purpose of tonight’s item is to solicit input from the Planning Commission for the plan’s Environmental Impact Study (EIR) to prepare the plan for eventual presentation to the Planning Commission, and finally, the City Council. But over the past two years members of the city’s planning staff have repeatedly presented high density residential developments along Euclid, Orangethorpe, and other streets as being consistent with the DCCSP, even though the plan has never been approved by anyone, and isn’t even finished.

Cuckoo-Clock-copy

Expect more of this kind of thing near you.

The impact of these projects on nearby neighborhoods should be a source of primary concern for residents of the city. More development can be expected to bring more traffic to smaller streets and avenues designed for single family neighborhoods. The DCCSP bears close scrutiny because, although it was funded by a Sustainable Communities Planning Grant, it is already being used to promote higher density projects without the transportation alternatives to make them sustainable or the promised improved public spaces.

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Categories Architecture, Downtown Fullerton, Environment, Fullerton City Council, Fullerton Planning, General Plan, Historic Preservation

Let Amerige Court Expire—No More Amendments or Extensions!

March 17, 2014 //
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Amerige-Court-South-Elevation

Flying the flag of mediocrity for all to see.

Amerige Court is back. This project is so old that no current member of the Fullerton City Council was even there when it was originally approved. At that time, despite objections from Fullerton residents that the buildings were over-scaled, badly designed, and just unnecessary, the city council voted to allow developer Pelican-Laing to build six (or seven, depending on how they were counted) storey mixed use retail and residential buildings that would tower over the historic downtown storefronts.

Since 2006, not only have we had a complete turnover of members of the Fullerton City Council, but John Laing Homes, the Laing part of Pelican/Laing, has filed for Chapter 11, leaving Pelican to try to raise financing for this monstrosity nobody wants.

Amerige-Court-North-Elevation

How many squares can you count?

The project was originally sold the public as a way to get a private developer to provide more free parking for the downtown businesses. But by the time the project had been redesigned, it actually represented a net loss of parking. The residential units were supposed to be for sale only, providing the stability of an owner occupied populace to quiet things down in the bar district. Later revisions, however, allowed the developer to rent out the apartments and lofts. No owners, no more parking, no benefits to anyone other than a slick developer, but that didn’t stop the City Council from approving extension after extension up until two years ago, when the public were assured that Pelican would finally line up financing, and should be given the chance to do so. At that time, even Dick Jones argued against granting a two year extension, preferring a one year extension, but he eventually went along with the rest of the herd anyway and voted for the full two year plan.

There is a history of the project on the city’s website. (It ends in 2009—even the city planners must have gotten tired of looking at it.)

AmerigeCourt-1

Still, a giant answer in search of a question…who really wants it?

In 2012 Pelican guaranteed itself a two year extension of its Development Agreement with the City of Fullerton by greasing the wheels with contributions to the anti-Recall campaign of then Councilmembers Don Bankhead, Dick Jones, and Pat McKinley. Councilmember Bruce Whitaker and then-Councilmember Sharon Quirk-Silva voted against the extension.

And here we are today, eight years after it’s original approval, with the “Fifth Amendment to the Disposition and Development Agreement Between the Fullerton Redevelopment Agency (which no longer exists!) and Pelican/Laing Fullerton, LLC, (which no longer exists either!) Regarding the Sale and Development of Certain Real Property Located Along the North and South Sides of the 100 Block of West Amerige Avenue.”

The staff report is replete with excuses made about the state of the economy and the disposition of former Redevelopment Agency dissolution legislation and its aftermath. Project Manager Charles Kovac, formerly of the now defunct Fullerton Redevelopment Agency, finally recommends the adoption of the amendment “in the interest of moving the project forward (!),” as if that is our problem—to make sure a horribly designed, unneeded giveaway mega-development with no independent financing should be able to move forward! Remember, this is Public Land being given away.

And the city government is so arrogant about the issue that they’ve placed it on the Consent Calendar, and not scheduled it as a public hearing. Unless a member of the City Council or the attending public asks to have the item pulled for discussion, it will pass without even a public hearing. Oh, and it will cost us $ 5,000.00 for the privilege of giving the developer more of our time and money to waste.

In contradistinction to the recommendation of Fullerton’s Planning staff, The Fullerton Rag recommends that The Fullerton City Council reject this Fifth Amendment, and let the project expire. Instead, either let the area alone and preserve the parking that exists, or, if there is some demonstrable benefit to the people of Fullerton who own this land, open up the process for another developer with a better project and the financing to build it.

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Categories Amerige Court, Architecture, Bruce Whitaker, Doug Chaffee, Downtown Fullerton, Elections, Fullerton City Council, Fullerton Heritage, Fullerton Planning, Historic Preservation, Jan Flory, Jennifer Fitzgerald, Sharon Quirk-Silva
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